There’s also the Amy Goodman Effect to consider. Goodman, the host of the independent radio and TV program Democracy Now!, was arrested on September 1, after trying to reach two of her producers — Nicole Salazar and Sharif Abdel Kouddous — who’d been arrested and injured while covering a clash between police and protesters. Goodman’s arrest in particular quickly became a cause célèbre on the left, thanks largely to an arrest video that was posted on democracynow.org and became YouTube’s most-watched video on September 1 and 2.

In retrospect, though, Goodman’s status as the RNC’s designated media martyr may actually have deterred further coverage. “Amy Goodman and her colleagues aren’t considered part of the fraternity,” notes Eric Alterman, the Nation media critic and author of What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias and the News. “They’re actually enormously resented by many journalists, and with good reason: they treat the mainstream media as if it’s part of a corporate conspiracy to keep people from knowing the truth. There’s not the sense of affinity there. They’re viewed more as activists than as journalists in the minds of many.”

In addition, some observers question the wisdom of Goodman’s actions in St. Paul. The day after her arrest, Goodman told the Phoenix that she’d been arrested without warning after attempting to get to Salazar and Kouddous. But the video of her arrest is more ambiguous. Goodman approaches a cop in full riot gear and tries to explain her intent. He tells her three times, quickly, to go back to the sidewalk. When she doesn’t, he attempts to push her toward the sidewalk; as he does, she protests that she’s got full convention credentials. He keeps pushing; she keeps protesting; then he tells his colleagues to arrest her.

Did Goodman go too far? Lucy Dalglish — the executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, which maintained a legal hotline for detained journalists during the RNC — seems to think so. “She went up there and got in the cop’s face,” says Dalglish. “I’m not surprised she was arrested.” (Goodman and her producers no longer face charges.)

Add it all up, then, and the mainstream media’s lack of interest may not be as surprising as it initially seems. But here’s the problem: because this story never really took off, a large segment of the public — and even the press — seems not to realize just how wide-ranging the RNC’s crackdown on journalists was.

Yes, the Democracy Now! staffers were arrested, along with others who might stretch traditional notions of what journalists are. (A Minnesota Independent list includes two people from Seattle’s Pepperspray Productions — your source for video “from the front lines of the global battle against the corporate state” — and three from New York’s Glass Bead Collective, which has worked with Billionaires for Bush and aims to “re-contextualize culture and the world in which we find ourselves today.”) But plenty of mainstream journalists ran into trouble, too.

Among the Republican thugs Minnesota is known innocently enough as the Gopher State, but for one terrifying, riot-gear-and-grenade-filled week this past summer, it was a police state.

Judge dismisses RNC protest case The defendants — who became known as the "Wall 7" — were in St. Paul during the RNC because, as Wilson puts it, "we think that our government should be held accountable for the crimes it has committed."

Go for the gelt Much has been made of how Mitt Romney has been courting evangelical-Christian support for his presidential ambitions. But Romney is also seeking friends — and, more important, money — among Jews.

Gay deceivers The California State Supreme Court just upheld Proposition 8, denying gay people the right to marriage. This should disabuse the complacent of the illusion that the religious right has relinquished its death grip on America. So, too, should Kirby Dick's documentary about the homophobic power of closeted right-wing politicians in America.

Workin' man blues Election years are always times of high anxiety for politicians. That may explain why they say and do so many stupid things.

The amazing race For the past year, presidential politics has been building to the crescendo that is the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary.

BULLY FOR BU! | March 12, 2010 After six years at the Phoenix , I recently got my first pre-emptive libel threat. It came, most unexpectedly, from an investigative reporter. And beyond the fact that this struck me as a blatant attempt at intimidation, it demonstrated how tricky journalism's new, collaboration-driven future could be.

STOP THE QUINN-SANITY! | March 03, 2010 The year is still young, but when the time comes to look back at 2010's media lowlights, the embarrassing demise of Sally Quinn's Washington Post column, "The Party," will almost certainly rank near the top of the list.

RIGHT CLICK | February 19, 2010 Back in February 2007, a few months after a political neophyte named Deval Patrick cruised to victory in the Massachusetts governor's race with help from a political blog named Blue Mass Group (BMG) — which whipped up pro-Patrick sentiment while aggressively rebutting the governor-to-be's critics — I sized up a recent conservative entry in the local blogosphere.

RANSOM NOTES | February 12, 2010 While reporting from Afghanistan two years ago, David Rohde became, for the second time in his career, an unwilling participant rather than an observer. On October 29, 1995, Rohde had been arrested by Bosnian Serbs. And then in November 2008, Rohde and two Afghan colleagues were en route to an interview with a Taliban commander when they were kidnapped.

POOR RECEPTION | February 08, 2010 The right loves to rant against the "liberal-media elite," but there's one key media sector where the conservative id reigns supreme: talk radio.